Ben's Bubbly: Philipponnat Champagne Royale Reserve

This week, Ben started daycare. We are lucky that he is at school with mom in the infant house just a few buildings down from her classroom. She gets to go visit him during the day which makes the transition easy. Four days a week, Ben gets to hang out with three other infants of Mom's work friends. On Fridays, I get to spend time with the little man. Ben is the youngest of the crew, but the oldest is only 4 months older than he is. The pack is lead by the only girl, and she has just started to crawl. Both she and Ben are very active and outgoing and we suspect that Ben is going to learn to crawl before we have time to baby-proof our house! It is great that Ben has a built-in group of friends that he can grow up with.

A few months ago I started attending semi-regular wine tastings with a group of guys who frequent the online Wine Spectator Forums and their significant others. We have tasted some very special and tasty bottles of wine during our meetings, and the group is very generous with the wines that they bring. For example, last week  we opened a few lovely bottles of vintage Champagne; 1998 Delamotte Brut Blanc de Blancs, 1998 Vueve Clicquot Brut La Grande Dame and a 1999 Charles Ellner Brut Seduction.While I often bring wines modest in comparison, I have opened a few eyes with a few of the Colorado Wines that I've brought, though not all. When one of the guys found out that we were drinking a bottle of bubbly each week for 52 weeks, he gifted us a bottle to contribute to our goal. I hope that Ben will some day be so lucky to have such wonderful  friends. So this week's Ben's Bubbly is brought to you by that generous individual.

Philipponnat Royale Reserve Brut

The color of this wine is medium gold. With the disgorgement date on the bottle being April 2006, the majority of the juice probably came from 2001 or 2002. However, with the large percentage of reserve wines put into Philipponnat blends, the color is not unusual for a wine that is 10-15 years old. The nose is fairly toasty with lots of red fruit aromas and a hint of dark honey. The large percentage of pinot noir in the blend gives this wine flavors of biscuits with raspberry and currant preserve with a good long finish. I've read good things about Philipponnat and this bottle has confirmed the high quality of this Négociant. 12% abv Gift. Very Good